Israel’s Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry receives hundreds of complaints annually concerning the work of social workers who specialize in legal proceedings. These complaints may often highlight concerns about the quality and integrity of the social workers’ performance, possibly pointing to professional shortcomings in their practice.
Distressingly, the ministry fails to leverage these complaints as a catalyst for systemic improvement. Instead, it handles complaints on a case-by-case basis without methodically analyzing this feedback to identify and address systemic issues. This inaction not only perpetuates a cycle of recurrent errors, potentially impacting court decisions that significantly affect the lives of numerous families, but also erodes public trust in the national welfare system designed to protect the most vulnerable members of society.
The 2008 report by the Slonim Committee, commissioned to investigate the work of social workers in family court proceedings, strongly criticized the ministry’s handling of complaints, noting a concerning tendency to routinely defend social workers without conducting impartial and thorough investigations.
Sadly, despite the passage of time and the opportunity to do better, a current statement by the ministry confirms a sort of organizational blindness. While introducing a new procedure (Regulation 1.43) in 2015 intended to improve the ministry’s handling of public complaints by “learning, drawing conclusions, identifying phenomena, and making changes,” the ministry readily admits in its reply to a recent Freedom of Information Act request I filed that “the work in legal proceedings is not built through analysis of complaints.”
In essence, the ministry focuses on a case-by-case approach rather than employing a deeper, integrative, and structured examination of the content of the complaints received about social workers for legal proceedings.
Head-in-the-sand approach
This head-in-the-sand approach hinders the ministry’s ability to glean useful insights from these complaints and leverage them to address underlying systemic problems. It also ignores its responsibility to engage in continual self-evaluation and improvement. As a result, potentially valuable information regarding the quality and integrity of social work in legal settings remains unexamined and underutilized. Moreover, such a defensive posture creates a chilling effect, discouraging individuals from coming forward with their concerns.
A disturbing statistic underscores the gravity of the situation: In 2022, Israel witnessed an alarming ratio of one complaint for every four social workers specializing in legal proceedings. Furthermore, from 2017 to 2022, the average number of yearly complaints concerning social workers in legal proceedings was as high as 306.
The human cost of this inaction is undeniable. The decisions made by social workers for legal proceedings, often based on information gathered during psycho-social investigations and presented in formal reports submitted to the family courts, have a profound and lasting impact on the lives of families and, most importantly, children.
When these investigations are flawed, biased, or incomplete, the consequences can be harmful, leading to unjust outcomes, strained family relationships, and a deep sense of mistrust in the very system designed to protect and support them.
Adding to the sense of urgency is the fact that family court decisions often hinge on the recommendations of social workers. This places a significant amount of power in the hands of individuals who, according to the complaints, may not always adhere to the highest professional and ethical standards.
The ministry must shift its predominantly reactive, individual case management approach to a proactive, system-wide model that prioritizes continuous learning, improvement, and accountability. Analyzing complaint data could identify patterns of professional misconduct, training gaps, or latent systemic biases that may be contributing to recurring complaints, and provide crucial insights into these issues.
This information, in turn, could be used to develop targeted interventions within the ministry, adjust policies and professional protocols, improve training programs for social workers, and ultimately foster more just, transparent, and effective social work practice for the benefit of families navigating the complexities of legal proceedings.
This requires a fundamental change in mindset – one that views complaints not as threats but as valuable opportunities for growth and improvement. Only by embracing data-driven analysis and continuous learning can the Welfare and Social Affairs Ministry begin to repair the damage done and rebuild public trust in its ability to serve the needs of Israel’s vulnerable families and safeguard their well-being.
The writer is a licensed Israeli lawyer, an adjunct lecturer, and a researcher at the Information Science Department at Bar-Ilan University.